


All That He Could Give Him

by stormbornbxtch



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Angst, Big John is missing, Canon Compliant, Crushes, Flashbacks, JJ is a sad boy, JJ is in love with Pope, JJ is self sacrificing, JJ takes the falls, John B is isolative, Kie's Kook Year, M/M, No Sarah, Pope's scholarship is important here, Unrequited Love, mentions of abuse, pls enjoy, pope is oblivious, stayed up till 5am to write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:26:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24403534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormbornbxtch/pseuds/stormbornbxtch
Summary: JJ takes the fall for Pope, mostly because Pope deserves his scholarship and partly because he's in love with him.
Relationships: JJ/Pope (Outer Banks)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 164





	All That He Could Give Him

It’s sophomore year. 

That’s roughly around the time, honestly JJ can’t exactly pinpoint when he realized, but it's around the time when he just knows he’s in love with Pope Heyward. 

JJ isn’t some kind of mathematician or whatever the fuck people call it so he can’t give a precise date and time that he looked at his best friend and his heart went “yeah man, you’re in love.” He just knows it happens during their sophomore year. 

Before then, he and Pope weren’t really that close. That’s a lie, they just weren’t the closest out of the group, not like how they were now. 

They have known each other since middle school. When John B got transferred into a high school course and was taking A.P. Geography because of his dad with Pope, that’s when it all began. John B befriended Pope and then Pope sat with them during lunch that day and so on.

So he’s known Pope for years and Pope knows him. He was there for all the shitty times his dad hit him and helped clean up the wounds. He was there when JJ got piss drunk the night before their first day of high school and even brought him coffee to help nurse the hangover the next day. Pope was always there. 

But it was never just Pope. 

Not until Kie’s kook year. Kie, who had been their friend since freshman year, newer than Pope but still just as familiar, leaves them to go play rich kid across town. Well, JJ guesses it’s not really playing if you are one. Anyway, then it's just the three of them. 

Then Big John goes missing and John B...he shuts down. 

He misses school and stays hidden in his little shack by the water all day, everyday unless Pope and JJ come by. Which is everyday after school and whenever they can but they never stay long because John B is the isolative type. He doesn’t want to take his mind off of it, he wants to fixate and obsess about where his dad could be. 

So he kicks them out after an hour or two and dives deep into his own little world. Leaving Pope and JJ alone to deal with the real one. 

At first, it was weird. Because JJ doesn’t really know Pope as much as he knows John B and Kie. He’s quieter than them both and typically goes along for the ride despite his protests. He’s great to joke around with but JJ doesn’t really know him

Pope knows JJ, he knows about his shitty dad, shitty house, shitty life and shitty addiction to parties. JJ was an open book but Pope, he was different. 

JJ expects it to be like normal, for them to go to the docks, swim, smoke and waste life away but Pope isn’t John B. Pope isn’t Kie. Pope is Pope and Pope has priorities and actually wants things out of life. 

After John B kicks them out like normal, Pope takes JJ to Kie’s family restaurant. She’s never really around but they show up anyway in hopes that she might be. Pope brings his textbooks and JJ brings paper to make planes with and his phone and they study. Pope studies. 

For like, hours. 

At first, JJ is bored out of his mind because for fuck’s sake, reading cannot be that interesting. But then, he stops watching Pope read the books and just watches Pope. 

He watches the way Pope chews on his pencil when he’s on a hard problem. He watches Pope’s steady hands as he highlights useful information. He watches Pope’s small smile every time he checks his work and it's all correct, which it usually is. And Pope becomes fascinating all of a sudden.. 

After a month of just watching Pope discreetly like a creep, JJ actually brings his own work. And they study together. Pope helps him. Like he actually explains the steps to JJ, tells him how to work these problems out and he’s patient with JJ. No one has ever been patient with JJ, whether it be school or anything else. But Pope is different and he’s the best teacher JJ has ever had. 

He’s the reason he gets through his sophomore year with a C average. 

Plus Pope cares, more than he likes to admit. He cares about disappointing his parents after all they’ve sacrificed for him. He cares about John B grieving all alone, he cares about Kie in that new school with all those stuck up rich kids. And he cares about him. He’s always waiting, at seven in the morning, down the street from JJ’s house so they can walk to school together or ride on JJ’s bike. Just to make sure JJ actually goes. 

Everytime Pope sees a new bruise or mark on JJ’s skin, he winces and tries not to stare with a pained expression but he always does and JJ always notices when he does. Then he asks if it was his dad and he always, always asks JJ to stay the night at his. Even though Pope’s parents are strict, they don't like other people in their house and will probably freak if JJ shows up unannounced. Yet, Pope never cares about that. 

Pope cares about him. 

In a way that no one else has. Pope pays attention and that makes it harder to hide from him because Pope always sees through JJ’s forced laughs. Pope always gives him that look, not of pity because JJ fucking hates pity but of understanding. He empathizes with him. 

After a while, when it’s just the two of them. JJ stops hiding. Slowly but surely, he tells Pope things no one and he means, no one fucking knows. He tells Pope about his mom and how she smelled like honey, vanilla and the ocean. He tells Pope about how she taught him to surf and how much she loved the water. 

He tells Pope about wanting to get out of obx. And not like how he tells John B because with John B it’s always like, “man this place fucking sucks, I can’t wait to get out.” and John B is like “yeah, same.” and that’s pretty much it. 

But with Pope, he tells the things he’s scared to tell anyone, what he hopes for. After swimming and surfing on the beach late at night, he tells Pope about wanting to live on the water. Finding somebody nice and kind to spend his life with, maybe a couple of kids if they can afford it. He tells Pope about wanting to open his own surf shop where he makes the boards by hand because JJ has always wanted to try making the boards himself. He'll spend hours upon hours watching videos on youtube of people doing it. 

And he likes the idea of it. Not like, loves. 

John B would’ve brushed it off but Pope just nods, looking at him with wet hair and deep brown eyes as the fire blazes beside them. Kiara would’ve smiled and said that’s nice or something but she wouldn’t have really understood what it was like to have a dream and be a pogue. Like really a pogue and not have kook money even if she pretended it wasn’t there.

But Pope listened and he understood. He understands because he has dreams and he’s a pogue. He understands the weight of poverty, he understands feeling trapped in the life you didn’t choose and barely having any options to make it out. He understands JJ’s idle hope more than anyone else ever has because he has it too. 

Which is why Pope works so hard for his own. Why he kills himself over grades and has panic attacks over the smallest slip up. It’s why he carries the weight of the future on his shoulders like Atlas carries the sky. Because he gets it and unlike JJ, he hasn’t given up on it because he knows he can do it. JJ knows it too, not because he’s in love with him but because Pope is fucking brilliant.

Pope is like, one of the smartest people JJ has ever known and probably ever will know. Like they’ll be joking around about the dumbest shit and Pope will pull out facts that were completely out of JJ’s mental capacity because he’s Pope. Pope will read books with hundreds of pages in them for fun, just to stay on top of things. Pope will over extend himself in extracurriculars and work for his family and check up on John B and still be friends with a fuckup like JJ because he’s Pope. 

And he cares more than anybody JJ has ever met. He never realized that until sophomore year. After watching Pope like this, JJ believes in him. More than he believes in his mom coming home one day, more than he believes in god and way more than he has ever believed in himself. 

Because Pope **can** do it and JJ, god, JJ **wants** him to do it. 

It makes JJ feel warm when Pope talks about his plans. JJ wants him to see it through, after busting his ass all his life for a chance, JJ wants him to have it. Unlike a lot of the folks stuck in the outer banks, Pope had the potential, he had the drive and he was fucking Pope for crying aloud. 

It isn’t until halfway through the year that it really hits him, what he feels. Because one minute they’re studying at Kie’s family restaurant and the next, JJ is staring at Pope’s side profile. Admiring the fullness of his lips and the curve of his nose and the pretty way the light reflects on his skin and fuck, it hits him and hits him hard. So much so that he leaves early, goes home to his dad **willingly,** who is thankfully passed out on the couch, and locks himself in his room. Coming to terms with what he felt, why he felt it and then crying because there was no way in hell Pope felt it back. 

Still, Pope was one of the good ones, he was kind and strong and gentle and fucking beautiful. He deserved the scholarship and his career is Forensic Pathology and everything he ever wanted. Jesus Christ, Pope didn’t just deserve it, he earned it. JJ knew what the fuck Forensic Pathology was, JJ knew it because of Pope. That alone should earn at least twelve of those merit things. 

But life doesn’t work like that, there’s a handful of these scholarships given out to kids in their state. Only a handful and there were a lot of smart kids, none like Pope but still. People didn’t always get shit when they deserved it, they rarely did. Some didn’t even get it when they earned it and JJ refused to let that be Pope. So Pope can’t just fuck up like everyone else and no one seems to realize that but JJ when it comes down to it. 

So when the cops show up, ready to take Pope, a young black man in america, to jail. A place where his humanity wouldn’t even be considered as much as it should, it terrifies him and JJ knows it. When they arrest him for something stupid that JJ coerced him into doing, JJ does the only thing he can do. 

“It was me!” 

He barely thinks about screaming after watching in silent horror, like a sick slow motion video as Pope is being escorted to the patrol car. It wouldn’t matter even if JJ did think it through because Pope was the golden boy. Pope had a shot at something better than the shit hole that was the Outer Banks. Pope deserved better than the shit hole that was Outer Banks.

Even if JJ never saw outside the city limits, Pope would. The boy he had been in love with for months, he could do so much more. Do so much more. Be so much more. Have someone who loved him who was so much more. Pope deserved more. More than JJ was and more than what he could give him. And Pope could have it all. 

He had too. 

So he silences his best friend’s protests, he says all the right wrong things. They cuff him and even though JJ knows his dad is going to kill him for this. Even though JJ knows this could fuck up his life forever, he doesn’t care. His golden boy is safe and if JJ could never give his first love anything, he could give him this. So he fucking smiles because he’s happy for Pope and numb to what lies in wait for him. His chest is fuzzy because the only future that matters is still bright. Because Pope still has his shot which is more than JJ has ever had. 

**Author's Note:**

> like I said, I'm obsessed with them. hope you guys liked it, let me know what you think.


End file.
